Because the Internet includes a vast amount of information, finding items of particular interest may involve use of a search engine. A user may enter a query, and receive a listing of URLs (uniform resource locators) in response. The search engine may prioritize the listing, such as by listing more popular URLs first and less popular URLs later. In some circumstances, the search engine may prioritize older content higher than newer content, because the older content may have more click data and a history of greater popularity.
In some circumstances, the search engine may provide a number of URLs that are unrelated to the intent of the user's query. Additionally or alternatively, the search engine may provide URLs in an incorrect order. These errors may occur because the query may have a number of possible meanings or interpretations, and the search engine is unable to discern the user's intent.
In other circumstances, the search engine may understand the general intent of the user, but it may be unable to put the intent within a time-aware context and identify URLs of interest to the user. For example, the user may be looking for “off-season travel deals,” but without associating the query with a season, the search may be inefficient. This may cause inconvenience to the user, who may be forced to sort through URLs that include deals offered in prior seasons.
And in still other circumstances, the search engine may not react quickly enough, when determining a ranking of URLs to provide to users, to the changing preference of users across a large population. This may result in a listing of URLs that emphasizes URLs with fading popularity and fails to emphasize URLs that are growing in popularity.